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Religious trends increase need for tolerance for all

Updated:
01/08/2013 09:00:06 PM EST

We have some more or less random thoughts about the Freedom From Religion Foundation's latest attempt to roil the waters in Chambersburg.

First, the Wisconsin location of the atheism advocacy group's national headquarters has no jurisdictional relevance to its recent complaint about a reportedly multi-denominational religious holiday program by the Chambersburg Area Senior High School Glee Club, on the school's publicly funded property, for school credit. The group reacts to complaints from its members wherever they might live, much the way out-of-town gun advocates parachuted into Franklin County on behalf of an ostentatiously armed voter who caused a stir at the polls on Election Day some years ago.

Second, if it seems like these troublemakers are becoming more troublesome with each passing year, it's probably because more Americans disassociate themselves from organized religion with each passing year.

A 2012 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life showed that 19.6 percent of Americans - and about one-third of adults younger than 30 - claim no particular religious affiliation, an increase of 4.3 percent over the past five years. That includes 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics, about 5.7 percent of the U.S. public.

Hard and fast figures about whether atheism and agnosticism have increased in the U.S.

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are harder to pin down, because distinctions between non-religious, agnostic and atheist vary from person to person. The Pew survey shows that the number of U.S. atheists increased by 0.8 percent between 2007 and 2012, from 1.6 to 2.4 percent of Americans. Self-identified agnostics increased by 1.2 percent during the same period, from 2.1 to 3.3 percent of Americans.

To put those numbers into perspective, the number of agnostics and atheists in the U.S. is now about equal to the number of people professing non-Christian faiths, including Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. Meanwhile, the number of self-identified Protestants declined from 53 to 48 percent between 2007 and 2012, according to the Pew survey, while the number of Roman Catholics remained fairly static.

Given this context, it's not hard to understand why advocacy groups for the non-religious have become more active and vocal. The nation is becoming more religiously diverse, which increases the need to guard against the potential tyranny of the majority.

Now, does it really matter a great deal whether a local school uses public money to sing Christmas carols on school ground, for school credit? Perhaps only in principle, and certainly not to the vast majority of local Christians (except for the apparent outrage that someone might object.)

But principles matter in this county; it was created and forged, after all, upon such noble abstractions as religious and personal liberty.

The ongoing increase in non-affiliated and non-believers in recent years probably requires that stewards of public property and resources (ie, not just schools) take note of the trend, and adjust.

- Matthew Major, opinion editor, can be reached at mmajor@publicopinionnews.com, or follow him on Twitter @MattMajorPO.